Aces Out: Laying the Cards On the Table
Asexuality in YA Series: Day 1 – Previous Posts: Introduction to Asexuality in YA Series
by Zach J. Payne
I didn’t come out with a bang, but with a whimper.
There are people who might see this as a blessing. Some people have their sexualities so scrutinized by those around them, and they’re forced to make a declaration for one side of the other. Some pray for the ability to slide under the radar, to have nobody recreate the Spanish Inquisition every time that they dare to express themselves.
Me? There are times where I feel like Schrödinger’s asexual. I’m simultaneously in and out of the closet, depending on the phase of the moon and who I’m talking to. This is not a comfortable place to be. To say that it’s a luxury afforded to me by my ability to pass as Straight is an insult, one that ignores the complexity of the struggles that Asexuals have to face.
Growing up, there was no word for Asexual. While words like gay, lesbian, and even trans are working their way into mainstream America, the concept doesn’t exist outside of socially forward institutions, most of them online. Sure, a lot of outside cultural discussion can be pejorative, but the words exist. That is such a wonder, you have no idea. Even in high school, when I first started noticing that there was a difference between other guys and me, I didn’t have a word for this. I knew that I didn’t feel attraction toward men, despite repeated inquiries as to whether or not I was gay.
When there is no word for something, we come up with one. For me, it was “broken.” And there are still some times when I feel that way. Like, for example, any time that I talk about the future with people who don’t get it.
When I tell people that I have no plans to get married or have children, I must be fishing for sympathy. “Don’t worry,” they say, “You’ll find the right person someday.” They can’t fathom that somebody might not ever want to get married and have children. This is especially true for women, since having children is so uniquely tied into what it means to be a woman. This gets worse when you start telling your family these things. Especially those members of the family who are looking forward to grandchildren. You know that it will break their hearts to tell them that no, it’s not going to happen.
But why isn’t that going to happen? People can adopt children, right? You don’t have to have sex, right? That is true. However, I wouldn’t feel comfortable trying to raise a child on my own. Many single parents, especially mothers, do a fine job of raising their children by themselves. There’s a stigma attached to this, one that is damaging and damning, for both parent and child – but that’s another can of worms.
Now, finding a parenting partner wouldn’t be trouble, except that any kind of romantic relationship is off the table. Our culture is addicted to sex; sex isn’t optional in a relationship. Either you put out, or you go it alone. Yes, there are people who are understanding of their asexual significant other, but this is largely the exception to the rule. Too many people (especially men) are obsessed with their “physical needs,” and are happy to walk out the door if they aren’t being met. You can look at history and marriage laws for this one: if you aren’t putting out, your relationship isn’t valid.
If you dare confess your asexuality, the public consensus is that you need to be fixed. This is another big one for the women, where certain individuals think that rape can somehow magically change a person’s ability to feel sexual attraction. The gentler people, however, simply recommend therapy. Because you must be crazy if you don’t want any.
This is where it becomes an issue for men, especially adolescents. Toxic masculinity requires us to be screwing everything that moves. Either way, sex and identity are almost inseparable in our culture. If you’re not having sex, you don’t exist. (On the other hand, it makes resisting 90% of commercials and advertisements really easy.)
Speaking of cultural attachment to sex, it seems like an active sex life is directly correlated with happiness and goodness. Perhaps one of the most painful things I discovered on my reread of Harry Potter is when Dumbledore tells Harry that Voldemort’s evil is tied to the fact that he couldn’t love.
Excuse me? I accept that she was aiming at something deeper, that she was implying that Voldemort didn’t form any real or genuine connections with anybody, be they platonic, romantic, or sexual. But, still, that is a very dangerous message to give to children who might be discovering their own asexuality or aromanticism. And, for God’s sake, don’t get me started on Disney, where the villains are either flamboyantly gay or cold, frigid, and unable to love. Just don’t.
Asexuals don’t face a lot of the terrible things that our gay, lesbian, and trans friends do. We don’t stand out, but we are targets. We deviate from the norm. It’s a lot more subtle and insidious than the outright hate that gets thrown around, but it exists, and it’s damaging. Worse, things aren’t really getting better when it comes to recognition or cultural change. I still have to argue with LGBTQIA+ folks about what the “A” stands for, a lot of them think that it stands for “Ally”. That’s not okay.
The YA community, however, is a powerhouse of change. Create asexual characters. Create asexual protagonists, asexual mentors, asexual friends. Let the guy that your main character lust over be asexual. Play with the idea. Do something with it. Tell asexual coming out stories, write asexual space operas. Just as we’re trying to step away from the idea that heterosexuality is the norm, let’s dispose of the idea that allosexuality is all that’s good and right in the world.
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Zach J. Payne is an aspiring YA fiction author, Doctor Who aficionado, and professional Facebook status liker. He currently lives in Reno, NV, and can be found @ZachJPayne on most social media platforms.
Introduction to Asexuality in YA Series
Welcome to GayYA’s Asexuality in YA Series!
In honor of Asexual Awareness Week , we’re featuring posts from asexual and asexual-spectrum contributors on various issues surrounding asexuality in YA. We have a FANTASTIC line up of posts, and we’re so excited to share them with you all!
The Awareness Week series are something we’ve started doing for all of the LGBTQIA+ Awareness Weeks throughout the year. Though we hope to include everyone on our site at all times, we’ve found that dedicating a specific and concentrated space to a community to talk about issues of how they’re represented in YA can produce phenomenal results.
Unfortunately, we totally goofed on the dates of the series (we had the dates from last year’s Ace Awareness Week in the calendar!). We usually run these series during the awareness week, and debated rushing to get everything together to do it. However, most of our contributors weren’t able to get their posts to us until halfway through Ace Awareness Week. So we decided to take the extra week so as to give ourselves enough time to get everything into it’s best shape and not rush our contributors. 🙂
We’ve got a fantastic line-up of posts, on topics ranging from why asexual representation is important, how to write ace characters, asexual YA recommendations, and more! We’re SO EXCITED to share them!
So now, let the series begin!
BLEEDING EARTH Exclusive Trailer Reveal + Giveaway!
Hey everyone! We’re so supremely super excited today at The Gay YA because we get to exclusively reveal the trailer for Kaitlin Ward’s upcoming queer girl sci-fi, BLEEDING EARTH! We’re also sharing an exclusive excerpt with you AND a chance to win signed ARCs of the book! So let’s get started!!!
Lea was in a cemetery when the earth started bleeding. Within twenty-four hours, the blood made international news. All over the world, blood appeared out of the ground, even through concrete, even in water. Then the earth started growing hair and bones.
Lea wants to ignore the blood. She wants to spend time with her new girlfriend, Aracely, in public, if only Aracely wasn’t so afraid of her father. Lea wants to be a regular teen again, but the blood has made her a prisoner in her own home. Fear for her social life turns into fear for her sanity, and Lea must save herself and Aracely whatever way she can.
So we totally freaked out when Adaptive Books reached out to us and asked if we were interested in hosting the trailer reveal, and I think it’s obvious to see why–it’s so gorgeous and creepy and does an excellent job capturing that apocalyptic vibe. Plus–girls! Kissing! In the creepy apocalypse!!!
In addition to that we also have an excerpt from the book to share, and it’s just as bone-chilling as the trailer:
Between Mother Nature and human nature, disasters are inevitable. Hurricanes and tornadoes and tsunamis and earthquakes all seem to be in an endless battle to outdo themselves. Sometimes creepy things happen, like birds falling dead, inexplicably, from the sky, or spiders raining down from above. People are stuck in a cycle of ever-increasing brutality with bombings and wars and shootings, each incident making less sense than the last.
But this.
This makes less sense than any of it.
We don’t even know what it is yet. If it’s blood, whose blood is it? And if it’s not, what could it be? Of course, the question that supersedes them all is why, and that’s the one it seems least likely we’ll get an answer to.
We can’t rescue people from it, because it’s everywhere. There are no safe zones for evacuation, not anywhere on the entire planet. We’re just as screwed here in New Hampshire as they are in Zimbabwe or Brazil or even the arctic, for Christ’s sake. So we’re waiting; school’s closed for the foreseeable future, as are most workplaces considered unessential—like Mom’s. There was so much panic yesterday, and there still is. But it’s died down, because it accomplished nothing. There’s nowhere to go, nothing to do. We just have to give it time. Of course, waiting is its own special kind of hell.
The Rafflecopter giveaway for ARCs is below! We hope you’re as excited about this book as we are, because we’re all SUPER excited.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
This giveaway is hosted by Adaptive Books, a publishing imprint of Adaptive Studios. They alone will receive and handle the information of the entrants.
Cover Reveal + Excerpt: Unicorn Tracks by Julia Ember
We’re so happy to be hosting the cover reveal for Julia Ember’s debut novel Unicorn Tracks. Julia hosted the fantastic Queer YA Scrabble charity event this Summer, and Unicorn Tracks (coming from Harmony Ink Press, April 2016) sounds phenomenal! Along with the cover, we’ve also got an exclusive excerpt to share with ya’ll. 🙂 Read on!
After a savage attack drives her from her home, sixteen-year-old Mnemba finds a place in her cousin Tumelo’s successful safari business, where she quickly excels as a guide. Surrounding herself with nature and the mystical animals inhabiting the savannah not only allows Mnemba’s tracking skills to shine, it helps her to hide from the terrible memories that haunt her.
Mnemba is employed to guide Mr. Harving and his daughter, Kara, through the wilderness as they study Unicorns. The young women are drawn to each other, despite that fact that Kara is betrothed. During their research, they discover a conspiracy by a group of poachers to capture the Unicorns and exploit their supernatural strength to build a railway. Together, they must find a way to protect the creatures Kara adores while resisting the love they know they can never indulge.
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is the GORGEOUS cover!!!
Isn’t it 10000000% gorgeous??? I just LOVE the artwork! And here is our exclusive excerpt!!! 😀
Excerpt:
I felt out of place in the warriors’ gatherings with so many of Obasi’s friends and former brothers appraising me like an enemy. In Nazwimbe, when you were elected to the warrior’s guild by the Chief, the position was for life. The guild became your family. Before I left with Tumelo, I had told my father how I felt several times, but he always dismissed me. They understood, he’d comforted, they knew that what Obasi did was unforgivable. It’s all in your head, Mnemba. When will you stop believing the whole town is your enemy? But if that was the case, then why did I always feel like they waited for me to do something? Like their eyes held hope, pity, and accusation all at the same time?
Tumelo was the only one who understood, who had listened to me and noticed how differently they treated me after it happened. He’d come back from his studies at the guide’s academy in Mugdani and had found me a shell of the person I used to be. Come with me, cousin, he’d said, his eyes bright with emotion. Let’s see if we can put some spirit back inside you. I closed my eyes, listening to the sounds of the gathering horses and the roosters crowing the early morning. We had to get Tumelo back, whatever it took.
“One of our own has been taken,” my father began, raising his voice to a loud boom. All the men assembled already knew what had happened to Tumelo. My father had sent out runners the night before to make sure that all of them would be ready to leave at daybreak. But the announcement, the stirring of suspense and blood rage by the Chief’s speech—these were our traditions. Mama stepped behind him and settled his headdress over his dark braids. “My nephew and a foreigner who was his guest have been taken captive by a slaver’s group who would overthrow our beloved General.”
The warriors raised their clawed hands into the air and chanted, “We follow you.”
“You honor me,” my father replied.
At the noise of the bell, most of the villagers emerged from their huts, rubbing their eyes. They raised their fists sleepily, some of them covering yawns. A naked toddler ran out into the street, and his mother chased after him, grabbing him in her arms and belatedly raising her fist with a rueful grin.
Kara leaned over to me, so close that her soft hair brushed against my cheek. Mama had given her a new bag to hold the foal. He nipped my shoulder playfully. “What are they saying? Doing?”
I shrugged. “It’s a ritual. We always do it before the warriors leave the village. Back before Nazwimbe was all one country, and the Chiefs used to fight each other, it was a promise between the Chief, the warriors, and the town’s people that we were all bound together. Now it’s just tradition, and my father likes to continue it.”
Mama handed Father his Chieftain’s spear, and he raised it to signal the warriors to file out. She blew me a kiss and lifted Imrai so he could wave us off. Kara and I rode up alongside Father, with the men following behind us. I felt their eyes boring into me, and I wished we could go to the General without the ceremonial guard. General Zuberi commanded a force of men larger than the total population of our village. He didn’t need the warriors Father brought to ride out against Arusei, but for a Chief to greet his overlord alone signaled disrespect.
As we rode down the path, I could hear the dissenting murmur of conversation growing louder behind us. My father’s eyes remained in front, and he seemed not to notice the way a few of his warriors traded glances as we rode past the Pits. Fury bubbled in my chest, and I remembered once again why I had followed Tumelo and left the only home I’d ever known behind. What Obasi did had broken me, but it was the town—these men—who finally drove me away.
“What’s wrong?” Kara asked. She didn’t bother to whisper, but I doubted any of the warriors spoke her language anyway.
I ground my teeth and looked toward the Pits. “It’s like they all blame me. I mean, I know that everybody accepts it was Obasi’s fault… but still, whenever I come here, it’s like people keep expecting me to forgive him and set him free. Because he was a paragon. Because he wasn’t a bad person, before. Because he was their friend. They don’t understand that it’s not about them, and it never has been. It’s one of the reasons I don’t come home anymore.”
Even though he couldn’t understand the language, my father understood the anger in my tone. He turned in his saddle, pulled his horse up, and rode next to me. Following the direction of my gaze, he squeezed my arm and said gruffly, “I know what you’re saying, Mnemba, and how you feel. And I know that before you left home, I didn’t try to understand. Now I wish I had listened better about how some of the people here made you feel. Until Obasi takes his life, and he will, there are always going to be people who wish it was different. People hold out hope that the past can be healed. But the weight of this doesn’t have to rest on you anymore. Know that if in a moment of weakness, you give in and that animal ever claws his way out of the earth, I will be standing there to gut him.”
Emotion made me speechless. Silence fell behind us. I chanced a look back. The men who had been whispering stared at my father with gaping mouths. A few of the other warriors bore a smile that surprised me.
The man nearest to us looked between my father and me, then he whispered, “What’s bound in blood cannot be undone.”
Pain and hope swelled inside me.
Father looked toward the Pits and spat on the earth.
Title: Unicorn Tracks
Author: Julia Ember
Publisher: Harmony Ink Press
Available: April 2016
GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25231892-unicorn-tracks
Author Twitter: jules_chronicle
Cover Artist: Megan Moss
Genre: YA Romantic Fantasy (F/F)
Cover Reveal + Interview: My Year Zero by Rachel Gold
We’re big fans of Rachel Gold’s first two books Being Emily and Just Girls… and today, we’re thrilled to reveal the cover for her newest book My Year Zero! I am so SO excited to be hosting this cover reveal– as I read My Year Zero I was filled with an overwhelming desire to make everyone ever in the whole history of ever read this book.
Along with the cover reveal, I had the chance to interview Rachel. Below we discuss the diversity within the book, geek culture, narratives in LGBQTIA+ YA and more! I hope by the end of it ya’ll are as excited about this book as I am. 😉 It’ll be out in stores March 29, 2016– so mark your calendars!
Lauren thinks she has a pretty good life—so why is it that she feels crazy most of the time? She figures it’s nothing she can’t fix by getting her first girlfriend and doing better at school. But how is she ever going to find a girlfriend in Duluth, Minnesota?
When she meets a group of kids who are telling a science fiction story online and gets invited down to the Twin Cities, she gets more attention than she ever expected, from two very different girls: charming Sierra and troublesome Blake.
Blake helps Lauren understand that she’s not the crazy one in her life. But Blake’s attention—and insights into life and living with bipolar disorder—threaten to destroy everything Lauren has created for herself, including her relationship with Sierra.
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here is the cover!
Vee: In My Year Zero you represent a whole lot of different identities: Lauren, the main character is a lesbian, and Jewish. There are a few bisexual characters, and a major secondary character who is bipolar. Did you go into the story with these different aspects of diversity in mind? Or did they emerge as you wrote?
Rachel Gold: I started with Lauren and Blake, but let the others emerge as I wrote. The character of Blake, who is bipolar and bisexual, was inspired by my first girlfriend. She was bipolar and bisexual and amazing. She died last year and I still can’t quite handle that. It’s what started me writing this book. I had to put her back into the world in some way. And I wanted to show a person with a mental illness who was dealing with it the way I experienced it when we were together: she was clearly struggling but more compassionate because of it, more open, and unflinching about supporting me through my own struggles.
Lauren is Jewish because my aunt asked me why I didn’t have any Jewish characters in my books and I told her I’d write one. Plus Jewish identity is so interesting to play with. I grew up Jewish in a very Christian suburb and it’s surprising to me how much people don’t know about Jewish culture, and about what it’s like to be simultaneously visible and hidden, so I really started to have fun with that.
Lauren’s an out lesbian because I remember what it was like being lesbian at 16 and trying to date — and that worked so well with the story. But in case anyone thinks Lauren is me, she’s not. I worked backwards from the Blake character to create someone who was right for the story I wanted to tell. I have ADHD that includes emotional dysregulation and in my teens I had a lot of trouble with that. I didn’t want Lauren to have that level of mental health issues to deal with so I made her more balanced than I was at 16.
V: This book deals a lot with mental health and emotional abuse. Often, when I write about stuff like this, I get really fixated on getting the representation right, and the writing gets very preachy and message-laden. I thought you did a great job of avoiding that, while also providing really really solid representation. How do you think you managed to do that? Inquiring minds want to know. 😉
R: One of the great powers of fiction is that it lets you live through someone else’s experiences without all of the consequences. We learn so much better by seeing mistakes made or pain experienced (and recovered from), than we do by being told what’s what. I wanted Lauren to go from oblivious to realizing a lot of things, I wanted her to get to fail hard, and for the reader to go with her through that journey.
At the start of the book, the reader only know as much as Lauren knows. We discover what’s going on along with her (or hopefully one step ahead of her). That makes it difficult to be message-laden because she’s not that way in her own mind. So I think staying close to your characters’ voices is one way to avoid preachiness.
I’m also very lucky as an author because I have letters and journals from when I was 16-18. I read through them for this project and remembered how it felt to be in my first relationships (some of which were problematic, to say the least). That gave me a great place to come from in understanding what Lauren would and wouldn’t know, the mistakes she would make, and the degree to which she starts out not knowing what’s really going on around her and what an impact it’s had on her.
In terms of mental health messages and representing bipolar disorder, I really wanted to avoid having the bipolar character be the one who needed to be taken care of or having her disorder move the plot. I think we’ve all seen plots where a character goes off their meds, goes manic and that moves the action for a while. Not to say that’s not an important story to tell, but it’s been told. I felt that by showing a character with bipolar disorder who gets to be both heroic and desirable — and who is clearly in a loving family environment, works on her stuff and has a lot of support — it shows what’s necessary and what’s possible, rather than stigmatizing mental illness.
In an effort to get all that right and not make it look like bipolar is a cakewalk, I did a ton of research. I read a lot of non-fiction and memoir on the topic. I researched what was common between ADHD and bipolar so I could create a bridge from some of my own experiences. And because I know I can’t fully understand bipolar, I worked with a popular bipolar blogger, Natasha Tracy, as a consultant to make sure Blake came through in a way that felt true.
V: You always include some sort of geeky/game-y thing in your books. In this one, it’s a role play story. Why do you always include an aspect like that?
R: My characters are geeks, nerds, gamers, artists and so of course they’re doing geeky/gamey things plus I am a HUGE geek. When I was a teen, we didn’t even have a name for it like “geek culture” so I love that it’s openly celebrated now.
I’ve been involved in group storytelling projects, role-playing games and projects that combine the two starting when I was about 13. It’s always fascinated and entertained me the way that people’s personalities and agendas infect the story.
By having the characters in My Year Zero writing a group role-play story together, it gave me another layer to show you how they’re feeling. The story they’re telling is a way for them to communicate with each other. As the relationships change, the story changes.
V: One of my favorite things about My Year Zero is that Lauren is already out when the book starts. Most LGBTQIA+ YA books are about the experience of figuring out your sexuality & coming out– and while that is a really important experience to represent, so are the experiences and difficulties that come after that! In My Year Zero we get to see that. Why do you think it’s important to show those experiences?
R: Not everyone is coming out at 15-18, some of us were already out. I started coming out at 13 and by 15 had already asked a girl out (she said no, but in a super sweet way). What I really needed was more concrete information about how to date and how to work with all the emotions around dating, love and sex.
To tell a story in that emotional landscape, I needed a hero who already knew her own mind, knew she wanted to be in a sexual relationship with a girl, but didn’t know how to do that. This let me have the sex Lauren has in the book be complicating — rather than the traditional coming out story where sex often represents the resolution of issues.
By age 19, about 68% of American teens have had sex. There are not enough YA novels that are both sex-positive and aware of the complex emotional landscape around sex. I’m a fan of what Carrie Mesrobian has done for straight guys in YA with problematic sexual relationships, so I wanted to do some of that for relationships between girls.
Plus, a lot of the sex scenes I’ve read in LGBTQIA+ YA novels are idealized. That’s important and wonderful, but if those are the only scenes you’re reading, and if at some point you’re having sex that isn’t all that ideal, it can be easy to feel like there’s something wrong with you. (Believe me, there isn’t.) I wanted to write about girls who didn’t have amazing orgasms right off the bat. I wanted to write about how fear and discomfort often exist side-by-side with amazement and pleasure.
But I should add that although I was deliberately messing with the traditional romance plot, My Year Zero is still very much a love story.
V: Sooo….. let’s talk about the cover!! I love it, and think it’s a perfect fit for the book. What are your thoughts? And what was the design process like?
R: I work with a great graphic designer on my covers, Kristin Smith. I think we started with a conversation where I said: “Lauren’s an illustrator so I’d love to have a drawing by her on the cover and then, you know, some stuff.” Kristin came up with the design of the two off-center pages where the left page is Lauren’s drawing plus her angrily scribbling in the book’s title and the right page is math notes by Blake.
We started with a different sketch idea, but then I was talking to you, Vee, about covers and you mentioned how important it was to have a butch lesbian on the back cover of my novel Just Girls. That was eye-opening for me — that even with more LGBTQIA+ YA in the world, representation is still crucial — so we switched Lauren’s illustration to two girls kissing.
I can tell you without spoilers that it’s Lauren and Blake kissing, which happens early in the book and is highly problematic for Lauren. She’s sketched it to try to work out how she feels.
To do Lauren’s art, I hired Alexis Cooke, who was so perfect to draw for Lauren. Alexis has been doing amazing art about mental health for a few years now (along with many other topics). Kristin, Alexis and I talked through some ideas, Alexis read the problematic kissing scene, and then she came up with this great illustration. I think it really shows Lauren’s mix of confusion, aversion and desire. For more of Alexis’ work, check her out on Tumblr and DeviantArt.
Blake’s math page on the right-hand side contains some infinity-related math. There’s a central theme in the book about zeros and infinities that has to do with bipolar, depression, emotions and self-expression. My dad, who is a mathematician, patiently explained some of the mathematics of infinities and gave me equations to look for. (I cheated and put some of my own favorites on there; anything that’s wrong is not attributable to my dad.)
Then I wrote out the math in handwriting I copied from the letters my first girlfriend sent me when we were 16. One letter actually included a few paragraphs about the mathematics of infinities that sparked the zero/infinity theme. I wanted that impression of her handwriting on the cover because the book is in honor of her.
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Find out more about My Year Zero, or add it on Goodreads.